Saturday, April 9, 2016

Regatta Report - James River Sprints




    On Saturday April 9th we made the trip to James River High School west of Richmond for our second regatta of the season. Again we were met with breezy conditions and cold temperatures on the water with the additional twist of a relatively strong river current making racing much more difficult (rowing up current against a 15-25 mph wind.) In fact, the head ref announced shortly after 11:00 am that "all events after event #17 were to be cancelled" due to the horrendous conditions. So we were able to compete in only half of the races we were signed up for.

   Our coxswains experienced the problem of rowing too far downstream of the marshalling area for the start, resulting in many crews having to row hard just to get to the starting area. This is not a problem at Botanical because crews can't go past the start area. This regatta also required "floating starts" where the starting ref tries as best as possible to align the bow balls of the crews and then executes a "quick start" (no polling, etc.) Due to the wind and current this process was problematic, at best. The resulting length of the course varies for each start. Originally, the course was supposed to be 1500 meters but after encountering large waves at the 1500 m mark, the ref shortened the course to 1000 meters.

     Only one race was captured on video and the edited vid is below. For the rest of the events the score sheet will have to tell the tale.
 






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